The album shows no shortage of the band’s successes, but as time has gone on, it’s the bands flaws that are more evident than anything (“Well I cried for you so long / My river of tears ran dry” - yep, still corny 35 years later). Like most albums of its kind, Feels Like a First Time is a perfunctory re-release, something that Foreigner diehards would buy in a heartbeat, but for those non-fans it amounts to nothing more than yet another greatest hits compilation disguised as a re-envisioning. New vocalist Kelly Hansen, while not a bad singer by any measure, isn’t that far different from former singer Lou Gramm at moments they’re indistinguishable. The only substantive difference is the vocalist, and even that doesn’t necessitate re-recording the material. Indeed, it does feel very much like the “first time” Foreigner’s music was released. Never has a title been such an apt summation of an entire double-disc record. Nonetheless, fate’s power would not relent, and as a result these two forces have teamed up and have given us Feels Like the First Time, a two-CD set comprised of acoustic covers of older material and digitally remastered tracks of, you guessed it, older material. The former is a symbol of how fiscal conservatism can move product the latter is, in reality, a meaningless date that has no particular significance in the history of contemporary rock music. Maybe it’s fate that the success of the Wal-Mart model and Foreigner’s 35th anniversary align. The album did end up moving over seven million copies (it seems that one Lebowski’s vitriol toward the band is wasted on the public), so it seems that the deal was far from a failure, even though the album’s exclusivity ended up giving way to having the album put on iTunes. The most notable recent example would be the Eagles’ most recent LP, 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden. It isn’t as if the exclusivity of the Wal-Mart deal gives the album prestige of any sort – panache is a word that no one on earth would ascribe to the retailer. Still, there are plenty of other stores that could sell the record just as well. The album will no doubt sell the store’s low-price guarantee, after all, is just so darn hard to resist. As successful as the nationwide mega-store is, releasing one’s album solely through that outlet seems a strange way to sell a record.

Wal-Mart exclusive releases are a funny thing, to say nothing of their conceptual absurdity.

Foreigner feels like the first time